Experimental Study on the Growing Process of Wind-Wave and Three Dimensional Flow Structure

Abstract

Wind-induced water waves play a vital role in the mass and momentum exchange across interface between air and water. They are closely related to various scaled problems such as global warming and water environment, and it is thus important to know the flow structure of them. So, many researchers have conducted intensively theoretical, experimental and numerical studies on this flow. In particular, Langmuir circulation is well highlighted, which is a large-scale secondary current with longitudinal axis.wave. However, most of previous studies using laboratory flume could not cover the longitudinal variations of current structure which has fetch-depending properties. Therefore, in the present study, stereoscopic PIV measurements were conducted at several fetches in order to reveal the fetch dependency of three dimensional current property and related turbulence structure.